Planning panels put on notice by Premier Chris Minns

Another section of NSW’s labyrinth-like planning system has earned the ire of Premier Chris Minns. If planning bureaucrats don’t cut the red tape, their jobs are on the line.

Premier Chris Minns has put planning bureaucrats on notice that their jobs are on the line unless they stop getting in the way of new housing developments.

The Premier issued the warning to the unelected members sitting on Joint Regional Planning Panels after The Daily Telegraph revealed they had stopped a $1 billion development in Newcastle at the final hurdle.

The Premier also admitted his state’s sluggish planning system was blunting NSW’s “competitive advantage” against other states, adding he would “look really closely” at the Newcastle proposal, which included 195 new homes.

The move has raised questions over the role of the planning panels, which are made up of locally-based planning bureaucrats and were brought into use by the state government in a bid to bypass political roadblocks at council-level.

Applications which have a value of more than $30m are automatically referred to the panels.

Premier Chris Minns on Monday. Picture:NewsWire/ Monique Harmer

Urban Taskforce chief executive Tom Forrest on Monday said the panels were a legacy of the former Liberal government, with many members appointed by the state’s former “go slow” planning minister Rob Stokes.

“They are slow, they duplicate work done by professional planning assessors and they are unaccountable for poor decisions that work against housing supply,” he said.

Panels should be required to comprehensively justify overturning Departmental recommendations, Mr Forrest added.

“When panels reject housing supply, where the proposal has broad support from the assessment team, they should be held to account,” Mr Forrest said.

Planning Minister Paul Scully has already read the riot act to Planning Panel chairs, who earn $2000 for every meeting they attend, and told them to stop standing in the way of new housing.

“Last year I wrote to all Planning Panel chairs asking them to take into account the current housing crisis when considering proposals,” he said.

But Mr Scully does not have direct control over the panels, which provide independent advice on proposals. He has vowed to monitor them and “make improvements” where necessary.

Mr Minns on Monday warned that major reforms ushered in by the state government – including rezoning land around selected train stations for higher buildings, and wider changes allowing more low and mid-rise housing near town centres and transport hubs, would be for nothing if planners didn’t approve them.

“That’s all going to be for naught if … the planning panels don’t give approval,” he said.

“We’re considering everything when it comes to new housing builds, and if bureaucracy or red tape or an unreasonableness in the system in terms of delay is getting in the way, then we’ve shown a willingness to just take it out of the system.

“I think that there’s too much red tape … when it comes to news housing builds, and when you’ve got the second most expensive city in the world, one of the only levers we’ve got is to remove as much bureaucracy out of the way so we can get homes built.”

Urban Development Institute of Australia (UDIA) NSW CEO Stuart Ayres said “all parts of government (have to be) pushing in the same direction” to reach NSW’s annual target of 75,000 homes for the next five years.

“The merits of new housing should outweigh overly technical rulings that drive up costs or even worse, stop homes from being built,” he said.